


Safeword

by cptxrogers



Series: Holiday Exchange Community Gifts [6]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Accidental Bondage, Getting Together, Humor, Jokes, M/M, Undercover As Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-30 02:04:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17214968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptxrogers/pseuds/cptxrogers
Summary: Five times Steve and Tony joked about safewords and one time they didn’t.





	Safeword

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cap Iron Man Community](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cap+Iron+Man+Community).



> For the Holiday Exchange Community Gifts prompt: "Steve and Tony joke about safewords. And then they stop joking."

The first time, Steve is getting his ear chewed off by the president over the visiscreen. Words like “inept” and “blundering” and “disastrous” are being thrown around and Steve’s already stern face is looking more dour by the second. “I’ll handle it, sir,” he says crisply, posture ramrod straight.

Tony manages to keep his mouth shut and his amusement to himself, at least until Steve flicks the visiscreen off and scowls. He really does look like he’s been ridden hard, and not in the fun way.

“You’re walking a little funny, Steve,” Tony quips. “Next time you should establish a safeword.”

Steve’s scowl deepens and he stomps out of the room, presumably off to find something to punch.

 

* * *

 

The second time, Steve is the one laughing.

It’s been a long damn mission, with supervillain-turned-part-time-ally Magneto to deal with on top of the usual circus of evil clones and government corruption. Tony thinks he has the situation under control: they’ve cleared the room of metal and Magneto is not actively trying to kill them right now, but he is staring Tony down like he’s considering pulling his armor apart one piece at a time.

And then Tony has to go and run his mouth, to challenge Magneto to show what he’s got, and there’s a tremendous squealing as every metal object within half a mile of them starts to warp and rumble and move. Tony had let himself forget, what with the ego and the bluster and the ridiculous on-again-off-again thing he has going with Xavier, that Magneto has the power to rip the planet apart should the fancy strike him.

Tony backs down.

Magneto shares some choice words about his fitness to call himself a hero and snarls at him as he sweeps out of the room, muttering darkly about tin men and their fallible human weaknesses.

Steve steps forward from the back of the room where he’d been observing events, one eyebrow raised in amusement. He looks Tony up and down.

“You’re walking a little funny, Tony,” he says smugly. “What was that you were saying about a safeword?”

Tony doesn’t even try to defend his honor. “Hilarious,” he says flatly, and pretends that he doesn’t notice the heat that sparks inside him when Steve smirks at him like that.

 

* * *

 

The next time, it’s the Enchantress who gets the drop on them. The team is running low on magic users at the moment, and even with all of their combined powers and technologies the Avengers are hard pushed to go up against an Asgardian.

The final battle is coming to a head when Enchantress shows more brains that Tony would have given her credit for, opting to immobilize Cap with a spell rather than attacking him directly. As vines shoot up out of the concrete sidewalk and wrap themselves around his legs, Cap yells for the team to go after her and not to worry about him until she’s been stopped.

Tony and the others rally against Enchantress, and it doesn’t take long to overpower her once Thor arrives to join the fight. Jan knocks her out with a well placed zap, and she goes down like a sparkly sack of potatoes.

Tony hands off containment duties to the team and goes to check on Steve. The vines are still clinging to him tightly, splaying his arms and legs wide and wrapping thickly around his waist.

Bodily speaking, Steve is fine, but his face is red and indignant. He tries to shake himself free and the vines rustle and slide around him, still holding him in place. He pouts dramatically.

Tony is still running off the adrenaline of the battle, and that must be why his heart thumps too fast at the sight of Steve trussed up, his muscles bulging beneath the vines.

He covers with bravado. “You know, Cap,” he says, leaning in and pitching his voice low, “if you’re going to try out bondage then you really do need to look into a safeword.”

Steve looks like he wants to strangle Tony, but tough luck for him - his hands are still pinned to his sides so all he can do is twitch angrily.

Tony grins mercilessly. “And if you ever need any tips on tying a zip snare, I’d be happy to show you the ropes.”

Tony thinks he must be winning this game between them, because Steve swallows hard at that and he honestly looks like he’s sweating a little.

Yeah. Tony’s definitely winning.

 

* * *

 

Tony is not winning. Not evenly slightly. That had been nothing but foolish hubris on his part.

He bites down on his lower lip, hard enough that he thinks he might be drawing blood. But he needs the pain to keep him focused, because something frankly _unbearable_ is happening in front of him.

He’s in a dark, noisy club, the bass thumping through his chest. The air is heavy with smoke and the smell of sweat. The floor beneath his feet is sticky, god only knows what squelching under his feet every time he moves.

And in front of him is Steve: dressed in indecently fitted leather pants, a leather jacket unzipped to show off his chest, and a leather cap perched on top of his head. He looks like a fetish model. He looks like something out of a Tom of Finland sketch. He looks like every private fantasy that Tony has ever had and immediately pushed down deep, deep inside.

To make it even worse, Steve is _dancing_. Every guy in here would be staring at Steve anyway, so the way he is swaying his hips to the dirty beat of the music seems frankly unfair. Unnecessary. A personal attack on Tony.

They’re undercover, that’s the thing. They’ve heard reports that Taskmaster has been training aspiring criminals in the art of seduction and that he’s been spotted memorizing dance moves in gay clubs across the city. The idea of him training Hydra goons in the power of sexy gay hips is just too much, so both Steve and Tony had agreed that the Avengers needed to step in.

What Tony hadn’t anticipated was the need for him and Steve to go undercover at the local leather hotspot, and what he definitely hadn’t anticipated was that Steve would show such dedication to his cover identity.

When he got details of their mission, Tony had chucked on a thin black t-shirt and a pair of skin-tight jeans, smudged a thick stripe of eyeliner beneath each eye, and called it a day. He figured the club would be dark enough that no one would recognize him and he wouldn’t draw any attention. But Steve… Steve looks like he belongs here, like if Tony left him alone for a minute he’d be inundated with guys, like he is what every guy here has ever dreamed of.

Tony carefully avoids thinking about why the idea of guys hitting on Steve bothers him so much and focuses on blending in to the crowd on the dance floor.

Unfortunately for Tony, blending in to this place necessitates hands all over each other, the slow languid roll of bodies, the slick feeling of sweaty flesh beneath fingers. The crowd seems to be pushing him and Steve together, close enough that he can smell the warm leather on Steve and that he can track the single, elegant bead of sweat that is running down Steve’s perfect chest.

Steve catches his eye and grins wildly, like he’s honest to god enjoying being here on this sticky floor dancing with Tony. But Tony knows him well enough to see that his attention is still on the room, assessing the space for threats, sensitive to any indication of their target closing in.

God, Tony really wants to kiss him.

Steve puts his arms around Tony and tugs him close so he can whisper in his ear. “That group over there, I think they’re waiting for Taskmaster,” Steve says, low and urgent. “Keep dancing. We can’t let them know we’re onto them.”

Tony tries to focus on the mission but he’s struggling to breathe. Steve’s chest is pressed up against him, Steve’s hands are on his hips, Steve’s mouth is blowing hot breaths in his ear, and Tony is blatantly hard.

He does his best to sway in time to the music without getting any closer to Steve, without their hips rubbing together, hoping against hope that Steve won’t notice the effect he’s having on Tony.

Steve doesn’t seem worried about propriety, though. “What’s the matter, Tony?” he gently teases, still far too close to Tony’s ear. “Can’t handle a bit of dancing? We can always go back to the surveillance van if it’s too hot for you in here.” He flashes Tony an innocent look.

And Tony sure as shit isn’t going to back down from that. “I was under the impression we were supposed to be doing recon, not dancing,” he says, throwing Steve’s look of faux innocence back at him. “And here I thought you were all about the mission.”

But that was a mistake, because Steve is no longer poking carefully around Tony’s feelings. Instead, now this is part of their game, and Steve gives him a predatory grin and yanks him closer so their hips are pressed together. Steve must feel how hard Tony is, just like how Tony can see the outline of Steve’s dick through his leather pants, but he keeps playing along.

“If you need to safeword, Tony,” Steve says with a shit-eating grin, “I’ll respect that.”

Tony’s mouth opens. though he’s not sure exactly what he’s going to say to that.

He never gets the chance to find out either, because that’s when Taskmaster saunters into the club flanked by a posse of goons.

Tony steps back from Steve to give him some room to think, but Steve is already leaping into action to take Taskmaster down.

 

* * *

 

Tony looks up and traces the details of the ugly ceiling tiles with his eyes.

The cot is solid beneath him. The air is dry and smells of disinfectant. He's always hated the medbay.

He hates the medbay even more when he's the one in here, his teammates’ worried faces looking down at him.

What had started a few days ago as a headache had progressed to a migraine, and then eventually to his vision fading and him passing out. The doctors had wrung their hands and shown him a small metal disc implanted beneath the skin at the back of his head.

When Tony saw X-rays of the implant he’d recognized the technology instantly: one of the Controller’s slave discs, miniaturized and updated. His body was fighting back against its influence but the Controller was powerful and the disc operated on both a mental and physical level. They couldn’t remove the disc without risking damage to Tony’s brain.

The team had discussed and debated and decided there was only one course of action: someone would have to enter Tony’s mind to help him locate and destroy the mental representation of the disc before the physical implant could be removed.

Of course Steve had been the first to volunteer to go into Tony’s head. Tony appreciated his loyalty but the idea of Steve seeing his innermost emotions was an actual, literal nightmare that he had had one time.

But his choices were either to let Steve in or to become a slave of the Controller, and even Tony wasn’t so stubborn as to refuse essential help when it was offered.

So now they’re both here, hooked up to a neural interface device he’d whipped up last summer on a lark, and they’re about to take it on a test drive through Tony’s head.

Tony takes a breath and steadies himself. No turning back now.

He feels a bubble of emotion well up inside of him and pushes it aside, desperate not to cry.

He tries to cover it with humor. “Normally I set a safeword before I let anyone get this close to me.” He gives Steve his best effort at a salacious grin.

Across the gap between their cots, Steve reaches out his hand. Tony takes it in his own.

“It'll be okay, Tony,” Steve says ever so gently. “We'll have you back to normal in no time.”

Steve squeezes his hand and they enter Tony's mind together.

 

* * *

 

Tony slams his bedroom door behind him and collapses against the wall. He’s alive, he’s not brain damaged, and they’ve destroyed that damned slave disc. In that regard, the mission into his mind had been a success.

By every other possible metric, however, the mission had been an unmitigated disaster. Tony had thought he’d be able to keep it together, that he’d had so much practice at shoving his feelings down that no one would ever see them.

And then Steve had been with him, _inside his mind_ , and he’d seen everything. All of Tony’s insecurities, all of his most shameful memories, all the ways that he was a weak and pathetic person.

Worst of all, Steve had seen himself. He’d seen how Tony saw him, that golden glow around him like he stepped out of a goddamn painting. He’d seen Tony’s adoration and his neediness and just how much time Tony spent thinking about him.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Steve had seen Tony’s fantasies. Every one of the stray thoughts that Tony had about Steve and blushed at, written into life in excruciating detail.

There was no way that Steve didn’t know about Tony’s feelings for him, and no way that he wouldn’t be disgusted.

Tony slumps onto his bed and curls up into a ball. He’d run straight here from the medbay because he can’t face the thought of seeing anyone else right now. He wonders if he could avoid the team for the rest of the week. Or the month. Or the year.

There’s a knocking at his door. Firm and confident, three sharp knocks.

Tony knows that knock. It’s Steve, of course.

Tony steels himself for more humiliation. Of course Steve wouldn’t let the matter rest, he wants to talk about it. He probably wants to reassure Tony that as repellent as his fantasies might be, he is willing to overlook them for the sake of the team. Because Steve’s kind like that.

Throwing a hand dramatically over his eyes, Tony forces himself off the bed and towards the door. He pauses for a moment when he reaches it, trying to savor these last moments when he could truly call himself Steve’s friend. The thought feels hollow.

He opens the door.

Steve doesn’t meet his eye straight away, apparently entranced by his own shoes. Tony waits, unsure what he could possibly say to make this better.

“Tony,” Steve begins, and he finally looks up. He looks… nervous, actually. Unsure. And that’s painful, because Tony had imagined that Steve might be mad, but he’d never imagined that Steve would be afraid of him.

Tony’s shoulder slump further. “Steve,” he begins, and his voice sounds wrong, too flat and expressionless, but he can’t control that. “I’m… I’m sorry about what happened. That you had to see that.”

Steve holds up a hand to stop him. “I’m not sorry. I’d do anything to save you, I hope you know that.”

Tony nods dejectedly. He does know that. Steve is letting him down gently, of course.

“I did want to talk to you, though,” Steve shifts his weight from one foot to the other, “about what I saw when we were under.”

Tony can’t bring himself to meet Steve’s eyes. He braces himself for the worst.

“I got the idea that you might. Um. Have some feelings for me.”

Tony chokes back a laugh. “What gave it away? The fact that you’re everywhere in my mind? The glowing halo I see whenever I look at you? The rooms full of private fantasies that I can assume were even more mortifying for you to see than for me?”

“Those fantasies. They. Um. Might not all have been yours.”

Tony can’t understand what Steve is talking about. He blinks. “I beg your pardon?”

Little spots of blush are forming on Steve’s cheeks. “You know how, when I was in your mind, you were also sort of in mine?” Tony nods slowly. “Some of the, ahh, scenes that we came across, I, ahh, recognized them. They might have, perhaps, come from me?”

“But that would mean that you -”

“Want you like crazy, Tony. I’ve been trying to keep it hidden. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. But I couldn’t bear the thought of you cutting yourself off because you think I’m not interested.”

Tony flinches back. This is all too much, there must be some kind of mistake.

Steve goes very pale and steps back. “Unless, of course, this is unwanted. In which case, I’ll just… go, and we can never speak about this again.”

And then Steve is turning, and he’s going to leave, and Tony knows that this is truly his now or never moment.

He grabs Steve by the wrist, pulls him back, and yanks him into a messy kiss.

Their teeth knock together and there’s far too much tongue involved and they’re pawing at each other right here in the middle of the corridor, and it’s still the best kiss Tony has ever had.

When they break apart for air, Steve is beaming at him like that kiss was the highlight of his year. He reaches out with a hand and pushes a strand of hair off Tony’s forehead.

The next thing Tony knows, they’ve stumbled into his room together, kissing all the time, and stripped off most of each other’s clothes. Lying on his bed and looking up at Steve above him, all golden skin and firm muscles, Tony wonders if he might still be in one of his fantasies.

“Umm, Tony, before we go any further.” Steve looks embarrassed again, blush slinking down his neck. “You should know that I have this thing with the serum where I get kind of… enthusiastic during sex.”

Tony pictures Steve bending him up like a pretzel and having his way with him. It sounds _divine_. “Enthusiastic is more than okay,” he says with a grin.

Steve still looks unsure though. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You never would.”

“Can we set a safeword? Just in case?”

Tony strokes away the worry lines on Steve’s forehead. “Of course we can.” An idea strikes him. “How about _Magneto_? That should kill the mood pretty effectively.”

Steve laughs and kisses him one more time. “Sounds perfect.”


End file.
